Brazil: Worker Engagement Program to Improve Health and Safety Issues

This groundbreaking program engages workers and managers to address root causes of health and safety issues in factories, tackling ambitious 100-day goals through team building and effective change management.

The program is funded by the Walt Disney Company through its Supply Chain Investment Program and open to all companies, whether or not they are a Disney supplier or partner.

The Worker Engagement Program addresses root-causes of labor issues and seeks to engage workers in the improvement process. It is currently being piloted in Brazil, targeting improvements in health and safety in companies from various industries in the São Paulo region. The program builds on SAI’s experience in workplace standards, management systems and worker-manager training programs, and its partner Rapid Results Institute’s (RRI) experience in project facilitation and change management. In addition, the program leverages Good World Solutions (GWS)’s Labor Link, a mobile technology to survey workers and measure the awareness and impact of the program in an efficient and anonymous manner.

As the core of the Worker Engagement Program, SAI and RRI have developed an integrated methodology called Social Fingerprint Rapid Results (SFRR). SFRR builds and coaches teams of workers and managers to develop and implement 100-day projects to achieve ambitious health and safety goals together.

The Social Fingerprint Rapid Results methodology is centered on three keys to spurring innovation and overcoming the hurdles to change: The Power of the Team; The Power of the Goal and the Power of the Process.

The program has had remarkable and measurable success in improving worker-manager engagement and specific health and safety problems during the pilot program in Brazil.

100% of companies achieved or are on-track to achieve their ambitious health and safety improvement goal

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS FROM BRAZIL

Formation of worker-manager teams - featuring freely elected workers - is a critical success factor for the projects and a challenging first step in gaining senior management commitment.

The structured SFRR methodology is extremely effective in guiding the team from understanding the broad health and safety challenge area (e.g. fire safety) to being able to identify and define a specific 100-day goal (e.g. 100% of employees can evacuate and arrive at the meeting point in less than 3 minutes).

Participants gain new skills and confidence to use in their jobs and personal lives, beyond the specific 100-day project.

SFRR generates positive ripple-effects of worker involvement and improvement in worker-manager communication channels throughout the company.

PROGRAM IMPACTS FROM BRAZIL

Tangible improvements in health and safety with positive, immediate impact on workers lives

Productivity increases, cost decreases and other business benefits resulting from health and safety improvements

Companies already applying SFRR method to other product lines and labor and business situations

"Before my collaborators had some fears to talk to the supervisors, now with the project the access is different and we can address any problem." (Worker)

"We have a lot of projects at our company, but this project went deeper and brought a lot of results and a lot more creativity to the area of Health and Safety." (Worker)

"We were able to show to our Senior Management, that our efforts as a team were able to reach the results even in a time of lack of financial resources, this was for me one of the most rewarding moments." (Manager)